Infinitival before and after-clauses in European Portuguese: temporal and aspectual properties

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to discuss temporal and aspectual featuresof sentences with clauses introduced by the connectives antes de + Infinitivo (before+ Infinitive) and depois de + Infinitivo (after + Infinitive) combined with situations inthe Pretérito Perfeito in European Portuguese. Our discussion is based on the widespreadview that these clauses are locating adverbials (cf. Kamp and Reyle (1993)) with temporalinformation of anteriority, in the case of antes de, and posteriority, in the case of depoisde. However, this analysis is not as straightforward as one would expect, because, whilebefore-clauses consistently render the same temporal relation (of anteriority), after-clausesmay convey a temporal relation of inclusion, in addition to the standard posteriorityrelation. We put forward the hypothesis that aspectual characteristics play an importantrole in these differences, insofar as allowing a temporal reading that at first sight is notpredicted from the semantic nature of the connective.In order to maintain a uniform treatment of before and after-clauses with respect totheir temporal features, accounting simultaneously for the differences that emerge in theirlinguistic behaviour, we claim, along with Beaver & Condoravdi (2003) and Condoravdi(2010), that the locating time interval provided by these clauses is bounded to the left, butnot to the right, that is, what is focused is the initial frontier of the situation that providesthe time interval, leaving the final one undetermined. Furthermore, we show that, althoughthe temporal mechanisms are parallel, the interference of aspectual properties leads tointeresting differences in the final interpretation of before and after-sentences.